The Gramastettner turns 60 and admits: Nothing is more unpleasant to her than when it is not her work but her person who should be recognized. In the film “Des Teufels Bad” by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, she can be seen as a perky mother-in-law who doesn’t make the simple life of her son’s wife in rural Upper Austria around 1750 any easier. In the TV documentary “Uprising in the Brothel” she recently played a brothel mother in 19th century Vienna, and in the ORF mystery thriller series “Schnee” she played a rich Tyrolean hotel owner. She has a supporting role in the new Netflix film “The Lovers”, and she appeared in front of the camera as a social scientist in “A Better Place”, a series for Canal+ and ARD that is scheduled to start in December. Maria Hofstätter is in high demand and is by no means confined to a specific type.
“Funny folk actress”
The autodidact, who was born in Linz on March 30, 1964 and exchanged her history and psychology studies for acting, got her start in cabaret. “I was quickly seen as a funny popular actress. I might have served that even more,” she said in an APA interview. But she hates pigeonholing as well as routine. That’s why her work with the project theater, which she has directed together with Dietmar Nigsch since 1995, was always just as important to her as her film work, where she soon matured into a character actress.
Picture gallery: Actress Maria Hofstätter turns 60
(Photo: Hans Kogler) Bild 1/12
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Austrian film history
She worked with filmmakers such as Paul Harather on “Indien” (1993), Michael Glawogger in “Die Ameisenstraße” (1995), Harald Sicheritz on “Hinterholz 8” (1998), Peter Payer in “Villa Henriette” (2004) and Marc Rothemund in “Sophie Scholl – The Last Days” (2005). Her collaboration with director Ulrich Seidl became a career booster that Hofstätter never actively sought. The scenes with her constantly talking, crazy hitchhiker Anna in “Hundstage” (2001) made Austrian film history, as did her strict Catholic nurse Anna Maria in “Paradies: Faith” (2012), who goes from house to house on a missionary basis and a relationship that is as masochistic as it is sensual to the adored Jesus, caused confusion and proved that when Maria Hofstätter accepts a role, she puts her heart and soul into it.
That’s why her debut as a TV commissioner in Nikolaus Leytner’s rural crime thriller “The Dead by the Pond” (2015) didn’t become a life’s work: “I soon didn’t know how to look anymore when I found out something,” she said at the time Since then, she has continued to stick to her motto: “Don’t frantically invent something, don’t allow yourself to be forced to be original, be completely normal and tell the story calmly.”
Numerous awards
Maria Hofstätter, who was awarded the Grand Diagonale Acting Prize (2013), the Austrian Film Prize (2014 and 2022), the German Acting Prize (2021) and the Romy (2022), among others, worked with Michael Haneke (“Wolfzeit”) and Josef Hader (“Wild Mouse”) or Arman T. Riahi (“Fox in the Burrow”). But she became really popular as the mayor’s wife in David Schalko’s cult series “Braunschlag”. But serious work and interesting tasks are much more important to her than popularity. “My motto has always been: keep fixed costs low and do projects yourself instead of waiting for a call! This prevents feelings of powerlessness and existential fears,” she said in 2015. These should have disappeared since then.
